5 Things You Didn’t Know About Vietnam LRRP Gear!

5 Things You Didn’t Know About Vietnam LRRP Gear!

In 1968, a six-man team crossed into Laos with 90 lb of gear each. They had no artillery support, no tank backup, no infantry reinforcements. If the enemy found them, their only options were air support or death. But here’s what made these men different from every other soldier in Vietnam. Their gear would be completely unrecognizable to a regular grunt.

 No helmets, no flak jackets, no dog tags, and weapons that looked like they’d been pulled from a spy movie. The long-range reconnaissance patrol teams and their even more secretive cousins in MACV-SOG essentially invented modern special operations equipment through pure desperation and improvisation. Almost none of it came through normal army procurement.

 Most of it was jury-rigged, hand-sewn, or flat-out stolen. And the gear they created is still influencing what special operators carry today. These are five things about LRRP gear that even serious Vietnam history buffs don’t know. Number one, LRRP teams [music] invented the ancestor as of every military MRE you’ve ever seen.

In 1964, the Army had a problem. C rations weighed about 4.5 lb per day. That meant a six-day patrol required 27 lb of food alone. Add that to weapons, ammunition, radios, and water, and you had soldiers hauling loads that made movement nearly impossible. So, Army Natick Laboratories developed something specifically for these long-range teams.

 They called it the food packet, long-range patrol. The troops just called them Lurp rations. Each meal weighed just 11 oz. That’s compared to nearly a pound and a half for C rations. They were vacuum-sealed and freeze-dried using technology that NASA had developed for the space program. There were eight different menus. Beef hash, chicken stew, spaghetti with meat sauce, chili con carne.

Each one packed about 1,100 calories into a packet you could stuff in your cargo pocket. But here’s something the history books don’t mention. A lot of the LRRP operators actually hated them. The problem was they required 1 and 1/2 pints of water to reconstitute properly. And in the jungle, clean water was scarce.

Drinking from streams meant risking dysentery and worse. MACV-SOG veteran Chris Telemaco couldn’t even force them down. His solution, he had his mother [music] mail him cans of Chef Boy-Ar-Dee from home. The accessory packet that came with each Lurp ration tells you a lot about 1960s military thinking.

 Instant coffee, sugar, toilet paper, waterproof matches, and until 1975, four cigarettes. The Lurp ration stayed in production until the mid-1980s when it was directly replaced by the MRE. And the manufacturer’s food division, it eventually became Mountain House, which is now the dominant brand >> [music] >> in camping and emergency food.

Every MRE that’s been issued in the last 40 years traces its lineage directly back to what LRRP teams were eating in the jungles of Vietnam. But the food was just the beginning of how different their loadout was. Number two, LRRP teams survived by removing more gear than they added. If you saw a regular infantry soldier from the 173rd Airborne walking through the jungle, you’d hear him coming from 100 m away.

Metal canteens banging against metal ammo boxes, helmet straps clinking, equipment rattling with every step. Lynn Black Jack Black Jr. served with the 173rd before he transferred to MACV-SOG. Years later, he described what that contrast felt like. He said the 173rd sounded like a Chinese drum line moving through the bush.

Every piece of equipment they carried made noise. SOG was the complete opposite. Everything was taped down. Everything was silent. And the list of standard army gear they refused to carry is longer than what they actually brought. No helmets, no helmet liners, no armored vests of any kind, no entrenching tools, no bayonets, no sleeping bags, no hammocks, no ponchos because the sound of rain hitting plastic could be heard from a distance, no poncho liners, no air mattresses.

SOG veteran Louis De Seta explained the logic. Weight killed mobility. Noise killed concealment. And both of those things killed recon teams. Here’s something you won’t find in official accounts. To avoid rashes, infections, and fungus in the humid jungle, many operators stopped wearing underwear and socks entirely.

Black and De Seta both confirmed this was common practice. But the most revealing detail was what made their operations sterile. No dog tags, no military ID cards, no letters from home, no rank insignia, no unit patches, no jump wings, no combat infantryman [music] badge. Nothing that could identify them as American soldiers if they were [music] killed or captured.

Their maps were cut down to show only the specific grid square of their target area. If captured, they couldn’t reveal what they didn’t know. Even their watches were different. SOG procured Seiko timepieces through CIA black budget funds because they couldn’t be traced back to US military supply chains. John Stryker Meyer, who ran missions with recon team Idaho, wore his Seiko face down on the inside of his wrist.

The luminescent dial was so bright, it could give away his position in the pitch-black jungle. But he still needed to check it for scheduled radio contacts at midnight or 2:00 a.m. As official army documentation later admitted, mobility and stealth are decreased when loads become too heavy. Fatigue affects alertness.

The LRRP teams figured that out years before the Army brass did. But removing gear was only half the equation. What they added was equally unconventional. Number three, LRRP teams were extracted by dangling 100 to 200 ft below helicopters, often while under enemy fire. And the harness that made this possible was literally sketched on a napkin.

The problem was simple. Triple canopy jungle meant there were no landing zones. Trees grew 150 ft tall with interlocking branches. A helicopter couldn’t land anywhere near a team in contact with the enemy. So, teams had to be hauled straight up through the trees on ropes while the helicopter hovered above. The first system was called the McGuire rig.

Sergeant Major Charles T. McGuire developed it around 1964 to ’65 while serving with Project Delta, which was Detachment B-52 of the 5th Special Forces Group. It was simple. A 150- to 200-ft nylon rope with a webbing sling at the bottom. You’d slip it under your arms, grip the wrist loops, and hope the helicopter could pull you out before the enemy killed you.

The first combat use was in mid-1966, and up to three men could be extracted simultaneously. But the McGuire rig had a fatal flaw. If you were wounded or unconscious, you couldn’t hold on. And at least one soldier fell to his death because of this design problem. That’s when SFC [music] Clifford L. Roberts did something remarkable.

After witnessing the fatality, he drew an improved harness design on a napkin. Then he worked with Major Robert Stevens and Captain John Nab to actually build it. They sewed the first prototypes themselves on machines in the parachute loft. The name came from the creators themselves.

 ST from Stevens, AB from Nab, O from Roberts. STABO. The first demonstration was October 1st, 1968. And the genius of the design was that it served double duty. Unlike the McGuire rig, the STABO harness replaced your standard load-bearing suspenders. You wore it throughout your entire patrol. The leg straps stayed folded and taped until you needed them.

When extraction came, you just unfolded the straps, clipped in, and kept both hands free. That meant you could fire your weapon or use your radio while being lifted through the trees. And if you were unconscious, the harness would still hold you. The cost was remarkable. The first 500 units cost $5 each. The improved version from Natick Labs cost [music] $14.50.

By late 1970, approximately 3,300 had been distributed to SOG teams. The direct descendant of the STABO is the SPIE [music] system, which stands for special patrol insertion {slash} extraction. Special operations forces still use it today. A napkin sketch in a parachute loft saved lives for decades. Number four.

The weapons LRP and SOG teams carried would be unrecognizable to most gun enthusiasts today. And some of them anticipated modern firearms development by 30 years. They even dictated type of weapons initially you could carry. And when I ran missions in Cambodia, I was down at TDY for a couple weeks. We had no TAC air.

What we had was helicopter gunships and we had the 20th um special operation squadron from the Air Force, the Green Hornets. Those guys were hot [ __ ] I mean, all of our helicopter, the majority of our helicopter assets were hot [ __ ] but those guys were the hottest because they were the Air Force. Had the latest state-of-the-art Hueys, most powerful, had the mini guns that were flexible, and they saved my ass.

They saved our team’s ass. So, in answer to that, I think it would have been a different mind Hi Phong Harbor, cut off Cambodia, so they can’t come in with the supplies. Tell the Russians and the Chinese we’re not fighting you, but don’t you bring supplies and cut off all the supplies.

 I think it would have been It would still would have been a long one, but eventually it could have been a different outcome. In April 1967, the Army purchased 510 Colt Commandoes specifically for MACV-SOG. This was the CAR-15, also designated the XM-177E2. SOG was the only unit in the entire war armed entirely with this weapon. It had an 11.

5-in barrel and a retractable stock. Compared to the standard 20-in M-16, it was far more maneuverable in dense vegetation. But getting magazines was another story. The 30-round magazines were so scarce that team leaders were buying them through classified ads in Guns & Ammo magazine using their own money. Some operators installed reversed M-16 pistol grips as forward grips [music] on their CAR-15s.

This anticipated modern vertical foregrips by about 30 years. The commercial firearms industry >> [music] >> didn’t catch up until the 1990s. They also scrounged World War II era old bar ammo belts because the pouches perfectly held four 20-round M-16 magazines. Whatever worked, they used. But the most ubiquitous weapon modification was the sawed-off M-79 grenade launcher.

Nearly every American on a SOG team carried one. They cut it down to pistol size, >> [music] >> tethered it to their web gear, and kept it loaded with a 40-mm round. When a six-man team opened up with multiple grenade launchers, it sounded like they had a 60-mm mortar. Enemy forces often thought they’d engaged a much larger weapons platoon.

One operator named [music] Gary O’Neal cut down an M-60 machine gun and ran a feed tray from his rucksack loaded with 1,500 rounds. The first 500 were all tracers. But perhaps the most forward-thinking modification came from SFC JD Bath. In early 1967, he took an M-16, removed the carry handle, >> [music] >> and mounted an M-84 scope directly on top.

He took it on a mission to a Laotian mountaintop. This was the first known flat-top AR-15. The M4 carbine with its flat-top receiver for optics mounting wouldn’t become standard issue for another 25 years. SOG operators also deliberately used enemy weapons. Point men sometimes wore NVA uniforms and carried AK-47s with Chinese chest rigs.

The AK’s distinctive sound masked American presence. And if enemy soldiers spotted them, there was a split second of hesitation. That hesitation often meant the difference between life and death. The AKs were also more reliable in the humid jungle climate >> [music] >> than early M-16s, which had feeding problems in the first years of the war.

But weapons were just one part of staying alive. The final adaptation was something almost impossible to believe. Number five. LRP >> [music] >> and SOG teams waged an invisible war against enemy trackers >> [music] >> using methods that sound like they came from a spy novel. The North Vietnamese employed professional trackers who could follow a team for days.

And they’d figured out something the Americans didn’t expect. They could identify American soldiers by their body waste. The difference in diet between Americans and Vietnamese created a distinct scent profile. So, before certain missions, operators consumed local food and smoked Vietnamese cigarettes to alter their scent.

The footprint problem was even more challenging. American jungle boots left distinctive patterns [music] that were immediately recognizable. So, operators improvised. Some molded smaller footprint impressions onto their boot soles. Others wore boots with barefoot-shaped rubber soles. Some wore actual Ho Chi Minh sandals, which were made from recycled tire rubber.

A few even wore elk skin moccasins. The trackers also used dogs. The solution for that was CS tear gas powder. Operators would drop CS powder on trails behind them. The chemical burned the dogs’ noses and destroyed the scent trail. Standard loadout included M7 CS gas grenades for this exact purpose. And here’s a detail you won’t find in official histories.

Some units carried gas masks on patrol. Not for chemical warfare. To silence a a snorer whose noise could alert nearby enemy forces to their overnight position. The camouflage they wore also set them apart. ERDL camouflage was developed by the Engineer Research and Development Laboratory and first issued in 1967, almost exclusively to LRP teams, pathfinders, and scout recon units.

The initial order was only 18,373 uniforms for the entire theater. Regular infantry didn’t get camouflage at all. ERDL was the direct predecessor of the M81 woodland pattern that the entire US military wore from 1981 until the mid-2000s. These small teams proved that terrain-specific camouflage wasn’t a luxury.

It was a survival requirement. Almost none of this equipment came through normal procurement channels. A harness sketched on a napkin. Rations developed by a man who went shopping at an Okinawan market with his own money. The first flat-top AR modified in a team room. These men didn’t just run reconnaissance missions.

They invented the gear that modern special operations forces is still used today. If you found this video valuable, subscribe for more Vietnam War history that goes beyond the textbooks. And if you want the full story of MACV-SOG, John Stryker Meyer’s interview link >> [music] >> is in the description.